My friend and neighbour, Andrew Cowie, dropped me a note a couple of days back. Did I want to rummage through a box of singles before he Freecycled them?

In the interests of decluttering, he’d splashed out on a USB-turntable so he could rip all his vinyl to mp3, and then dispense with the shelfspace-hungry discs.

Naturally, I took the whole box — in excess of 200 records — and, since he’d finished with the turntable as well, walked away with that 3-week old piece of kit at a real sub-bargain price. Generous man.

Even better, I found a fault with the unit that allowed me to exchange it for a brand new one at the shop. Score.

By way of follow-up, Andrew sent me an email annotating some of the records he wanted to draw my particular attention to — and, to acknowledge the huge favour he’s done me, and with his permission, I include the notes here… along with the songs themselves, ripped from vinyl using my new setup, shown above.

Getting So Exciting – Lee Kosmin

Every town has its local rock stars that no-one else has ever heard of and Lee Kosmin was one of ours. If you lived in North London in the late 70s/early 80s he was playing in a pub near you; in fact if you live there now he still is.

My sister shared a house in Walthamstow and my best friend had a flat in Crouch End (I knew nobody in South London and I was in my 20s before I ever went south of the river) so I used to go to parties like this; everyone would get drunk, I’d almost but not quite get off with someone, there might be a bit of dancing and there might be a bit of a scuffle. Not promising material but when you hear your own life played back to you in a pop song it somehow seems more glamorous and exciting (“in North West 4”) than it felt at the time.

Plummet Airlines – Silver Shirt

The first time I heard this was on the jukebox at the famous Hope And Anchor pub in Islington in 1978 where my old schoolfriend and I used to go and drink on Tuesday nights surrounded by big bikers in studs and leathers and tiny punks in ripped jeans and T-shirts. I tried to buy the record off the jukebox but it was managed by the jukebox company so they couldn’t let me have it and it took me another two years to find a copy. If ever a chorus deserved to be sung by 10,000 people waving lighters in the air it was this but they reached a fork in the road; one way read “Fame and Fortune”, the other read ”Obscurity And The Occasional Pub Gig” and they followed their destiny.

(NZ Readers: it’s Billy Bold, right? – Dubber)

Turn The Beat Around – Vicky Sue Robinson

In the summer of 1976 I spent seven weeks hitch-hiking around the States visiting American students I’d got to know at Lancaster University on their one year exchange programme. The last stop on the trip was with a girl called Pam who lived in Pittsburg and I arrived the week she went back to university at Dickinson College so I went with her. The freshers’ week routine consisted of breakfast at midday, tequilias at 4pm (a pinch of salt to make you thirsty enough to drink it and then a slice of lime to take away the taste – the objective was to be drunk, pure and simple), dinner and then whichever party was on that night at which this record was always played. A completely happy time in my life.

Silver Spring – Fleetwood Mac

I went halves on Rumours in my final year at university (1977) with Linden Bordell with whom I was despairingly in love so it, and all things Fleetwood Mac, became the soundtrack to my non-affair with her. This song was left off Rumours because they had too many songs so they put it on the B side of Go Your Own Way as a consolation to the apparently inconsolable Stevie Nicks – an absolutely gorgeous song which I played to death, as you can probably tell from the crackles. It also illustrates my thesis that every strand of popular music peaked in 1977; Hotel California and Rumours were the perfect America rock albums, Donna Summer released I Feel Love which is the perfect disco record (and in my opinion far more influential than anything Bowie ever did!) and The Sex Pistols released Never Mind the Bollocks which skinny white boys have copied ever since.

(We’d had a conversation about whether Bowie was actually influential, or just important – Dubber)

Green Onions – Booker T And The MGs

I was 17 in 1973 when American Graffiti came out and I was still a year away from university so films about American high school students my age who drove big cars and had sex were impossibly exotic. There wasn’t a cinema where we lived so my sister and I took the bus to Welwyn Garden City to see it there. This was the music George Lucas used for the drag race out in the desert at dawn (or maybe dusk? – dark anyway) – I have no recollection of ever having heard it before that but I came out of the cinema determined to find out what it was and buy a copy.

(This record features an effect we vinyl enthusiasts call ‘wow’ – and not in a good Windows Vista ads kind of way… – Dubber)

I’m incredibly grateful to Andrew for his gift of records, the absolute bargain of a USB turntable — and the insight into the personal connections of meaning associated with the records in the box.

And I can recommend the ION USB turntable as a way of converting your vinyl into digital files. It’s made by Numark, who are a very well respected manufacturer of DJ equipment, and for £100, give or take (substantially less, if you happen to get lucky in the way I did), it’s worth every penny.